


oh darling don't you ever grow up

by MJosephine10



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen, a snippet of damon as a dad, set to a taylor swift song because of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 04:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17655785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MJosephine10/pseuds/MJosephine10





	oh darling don't you ever grow up

 

 _Your little hands wrapped around my finger, it's so quiet in the world tonight_  

 

* * *

 

"Daddy?"

Even without the vampire hearing, Damon heard Mae's aching voice through his sleep and in an instant was awake, and in the next in his eldest daughter's room.

"Mae?"

She was sitting up in bed clutching her teddy bear fiercely. Her face was swollen from crying but there were no tears. Her eyes were round with shock.

In an instant, she was on his lap, his arms were around her ready to fight away all the monsters.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong? What's wrong?"

"I-" she began to explain but tears overwhelmed her again. She turned and buried his head on her shoulder, crying as though her heart would break.

Damon held her tight and stroked her hair. It was the same chestnut brown as Elena's- Elena who was still sleeping peacefully, thank God. (Damon's heart always breathed a little easier when Elena got to sleep when Miranda had one of her night terrors. They were his to listen to.)

"Was it the nightmares again?"

She nodded wordlessly, tiny arms around his neck growing tighter.

"You know those aren't real, sweetheart. I'm right here. We're right here."

"You died- you and Mommy. You fell off a cliff and-"

Damon rocked her slowly back and forth. 

"And then- there was a wolf at the bottom and it ate you up!"

An instinct to laugh swelled up in Damon. Instead, he kissed the top of her head and asked her if that was all that had happened.

(It wasn't.)

She poured out the rest of her dream to him in messy, vivid detail, a horror story from a four year old's brain involving cracks opening up in the earth and thunderstorms and clowns. As she told him, he felt her grow calm against him, her worries radiating off of her.

Even at four, she was a good storyteller- completely sincere, completely engrossed in the details of her story.

Half-Elena, wholly herself, with glimmers of him woven in between, Mae had blue eyes. They were darker than his but they had something of their shape. The softness in them was all her mother's. Or, you would never convince Damon otherwise.

As the details wound down, her voice grew quieter and quieter, the pauses in between longer and longer, and when Damon bent down to ask her a calming question, she was fast asleep, her little hand tight in his.

 

* * *

 

 

_I'd give all I have honey, if you could stay like that._

 


End file.
